Investigating a police force...
Question: It's bad enough to have one lazy, incompetent cop on a police force...but what happens when an ENTIRE police department is deemed to be inept?
Answer: Cold cases don't get solved.
In 2005, the Harvey Police Department in Cook County, Illinois didn't solve any of its nine homicides.
There were also 36 federal lawsuits against the department.
In January 2006, state police and the attorney's office raided the Harvey Police Department and discovered that nearly 200 rape kits found in the evidence vault were never sent to the state crime lab. They also had dozens of homicides on the books.
The task force seized records and evidence related to unsolved murders and other violent crimes, and now investigators are examining unsolved cases going back a decade.
After the raid, murder charges were laid in one homicide that was a year old. On September 25, 2007, indictments were announced in two more cold case murders stemming from the same raid.
Of course, the police department blames chronic understaffing and political influence for their poor track record. (It couldn't be their own incompetence and corruption could it?)
In addition to the police having possible gang ties, the state's lawmakers also say the department hired officers with questionable backgrounds. In fact, one of the city's police officers was actually a plumber by trade who happened to be the mayor's brother.
When members of the state's task force told a victim's mother they were investigating her son's murder, she cried. "With Harvey, year after year, I'd call them and say, you know, 'I'd like to know what you're doing with my son's case.' And they never had any information for me. I thought they would never solve it. I thought it was a cold, cold case."
To read more about Harvey's "finest", visit
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-harvey_raid_websep26,1,2175776.story?track=rss&ctrack=3&cset=true
http://www.dailysouthtown.com/news/harvey/56103,jun18_06.article
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Maritime Missy
posted by John Allore @ 9/29/2007 10:17:00 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
An interesting book about the 'Blue Code of Silence' written by retired police officer, Michael. W. Quinn, "Walking With The Devil" subtitled: What Bad Cops Don't Want You To Know and Good Cops Won't Tell You.
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